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Houston Police Test Unmanned Surveillance Aircraft
54mc writes "The Houston Police Department was filmed testing an unmanned aircraft in a secretive gathering on Wednesday. The media were not allowed into the event; however they were told that the aircraft would be used for 'mobility' and 'tactical' issues, and possibly even for writing traffic tickets. The aircraft has a wingspan of 10 feet and is said to cost from $30K to $1M. Pictures and video are available at the link." The article mentions that the craft was being operated by staff from a private firm called Insitu, Inc.. The device in the video looks like the firm's ScanEagle.
That's a very broad price range.
I for one want to see if the same "+5 informative", "+5 insightful" inflamed comments about how a similar thing happening in Venezuela was a proof of a totalitarian government will be repeated on this thread, by the same set of people.
Normaly copters are used to supplement an active investigation. If you see one, you know something is up ( or its just the local TV station running traffic reports.. )
These things will just fly around and look at everyone, hoping to catch you with your pants down. Later they will just record every move everyone makes, regardless of any suspicion. Do you want that? I don't. Unless I'm under active court supported suspicion, they don't have a right to 'follow' me around, 'just in case'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"The privacy nutters never seem to come up with better arguments then "this won't allow us to break the law anymore". Fine with me, don't like the law, change it, don't break it."
What an intelligent suggestion... and one that shows your comprehensive knowledge of history! Why, if only the citizens of the USSR had known, they could have just changed the law rather than running from the gulag! Same goes for the citizens of Nazi Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and even the United States under slavery. What were those people thinking, rebelling against slavery, running away from their legal owners, protesting the laws by violating them? They should have just changed the law, not broken it!
Yes, you really do seem to understand this. I applaud your pure insight. When an unjust law exists, it is our responsibility to obey it!
...and you've never seen the Autobahn at its best. No speed limit, and it WORKS. Why? Drivers who want to KEEP that lack of a speed limit driving at high rates in a usually logical manner.
I've seen it in motion. Fraggin' beautiful.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
However, that doesn't work when the speed limit doesn't reflect the speed that people are actually travelling on the road. I've seen lots of roads where the speed limit is set way below the actual speed that people travel. If you drive at the speed limit, then not only will you get a lot of other drivers really angry, but you'll probably be really unsafe too, as drivers will come up behind you at a really high speed. Also, for a little experiment in speed limits, try coordinating with 3 other people to each drive in one lane of the expressway at the speep limit. Not directly beside eachother, but with just enough room for other drivers to pass and go around you. Watch the traffic pile up behind you, and bring the city to a stand still, and watch the lack of traffic in front of you. What's really terrible is that speed limits are set such that they are not to be followed. Then they arrest you for going 2 km/h faster than the other guy, just because you happen to be going 30 km/h over the limit, and he was going 28 km/h over the limit.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
He could observe courtesy (and what the law requires in many areas) by driving in the slowest lanes thereby minimizing or eliminating any safety hazard caused by his slow driving.
It's well known that excessive speed differentials create dangerous conditions. That's why freeways have minimum speed limits and why failure to yield right of way is seriously enforced in some areas. A strong argument could be made that safety hazards created by excessively slow drivers are just as much the government's responsibility as anyone else. They're the ones setting deliberately slow speed limits that encourage drivers to ignore posted speeds and they're the one's supporting low standards of driver competence in their licensing policies. Where uniform speeds are driven, whether or not they correlate to posted speeds, driving is relatively safer. Raising speed limits, therefore, can have a beneficial effect on safety in some cases.